


con te partirò su navi per mari

by Ignaz Wisdom (ignaz)



Category: Blades of Glory (2007)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-27
Updated: 2007-05-27
Packaged: 2017-10-01 23:57:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignaz/pseuds/Ignaz%20Wisdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>He asks for a family for Christmas, and in January, Daddy arrives.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	con te partirò su navi per mari

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from "Time to Say Goodbye," the song playing over the opening credits. Thank you to thesamefire for the read-through.

He asks for a family for Christmas, and in January, Daddy arrives.

Father St. Pierre takes him by the hand and solemnly explains that he must skate for Mr. MacElroy -- that Mr. MacElroy has come from very far away to see him skate. Jimmy is small, but he understands. He wants Father St. Pierre to be proud of him. Sister Mary Alice laces up his skates, kisses him on the forehead, and sends him out onto the ice.

He does his best, spinning as fast and jumping as high as he can. Sometimes he stumbles, but he just smiles and keeps going, like Father St. Pierre told him. The winter breeze is sharp on his cheeks and he knows he's doing well. When he looks over, Father St. Pierre and Mr. MacElroy are smiling back.

Soon, he will have a real home. Soon, he will say goodbye to Father St. Pierre and the sisters and the other boys, and he will travel far from the only home he has ever known. He will smile, his tiny hand clasped in Daddy's larger one, scampering to keep up with Daddy's long stride. Soon, he will have a family. Everything will be right.

* * *

When Jimmy is seven, Emma takes him to the Blueberry Festival.

Emma is his nanny. She goes everywhere with him and Daddy. She reads him bedtime stories and puts Band-Aids on him when he falls. Jimmy likes to pretend that Emma is his mother, but he doesn't tell her or Daddy.

Daddy says he can't go with them to the fair. Jimmy pouts and says "please, Daddy, _please_," but Daddy just presses a button on the wall and tells Emma to come and take him out of the office.

He loves the Blueberry Festival. Emma lets him have cotton candy, which he's never had before, and they share a piece of blueberry pie that turns both of their mouths purple. They ride the Ferris wheel and the carousel and Jimmy laughs and laughs until he feels like he's going to be sick. Emma throws a baseball at a stack of metal bottles and wins him a big blue rabbit.

On the drive home, Jimmy sleeps with his arm around the rabbit. When they get back, he feels Emma pick him up, carry him inside, and put him to bed. She strokes his hair and whispers _goodnight, sweetheart_ before she goes.

* * *

Days start at six o'clock, when Jimmy gets himself up, puts on his clothes, and goes downstairs to the kitchen. Barney, the cook, always gives him the same thing for breakfast: a Nutrilite protein bar and a glass of vitamin-fortified water.

Jimmy is ten, and just getting old enough to tell when adults are pretending they like what they're doing when they secretly wish they weren't doing it. Barney never looks like he's happy when Jimmy is in the kitchen, but he never says anything, and Jimmy never asks.

Sometimes when Dad is out of town, Barney gives Jimmy a cinnamon roll with sugar frosting. He makes Jimmy promise not to tell his father, and they always pinkie swear on it before eating the rolls, which taste like heaven.

When Dad is home, he takes Jimmy to their private practice rink. Coach is always there, along with Jimmy's personal trainers. Sometimes other people come to watch him. Jimmy skates for hours and hours, gliding across the ice, practicing his loops and salchows, basking in the applause and encouragement from the spectators, trying not to flinch at his father's criticisms.

Sometimes he thinks about them later, when he's alone, and cries.

* * *

Jimmy is twelve when he realizes that he's never had a birthday party. Oh, sure, his birthdays have been celebrated: Dad always gives him something, like a new gym bag, and Coach always takes him out for frozen yogurt. Emma sends a card from England, which was where she went when Jimmy turned nine and Dad said he didn't need a nanny anymore.

He doesn't want presents. Dad always says if Jimmy wants something, he'll buy it, and most of the time Jimmy doesn't want anything you can buy with money, anyway. He doesn't want cake because it has too much sugar and fat, and he doesn't want to play games because he doesn't actually know any.

When he's twelve, he decides to have a birthday party. He starts by making a list of people to invite, but it stops after Dad, Coach, his choreographer, and the house staff.

He is universally adored by skate fans, sports writers, and even the pros who sometimes look at him like they're expecting him to stab them in the back the moment they turn around, but he can't call any of them.

That's when he also realizes that he's never had a friend.

* * *

When Jimmy is fourteen, Dad makes him start shaving. Not his face, which is still baby-soft and smooth, but his legs, the peach fuzz on his arms, and very nearly his pubic hair. His father says it will reduce wind resistance, giving him greater height on those Axels, more speed on the spins, more triples than doubles.

Jimmy doesn't know how to use the electric razor, and truthfully, it scares him a little -- all those tiny blades whirring, sharp as skates. He asks Dad for help. Dad has Frank, their chauffeur, show him how to do it, how it's impossible to cut himself.

Afterward, Jimmy sits in the bathroom, surrounded by bone-white ceramic tile, pressing the still blades against the bare skin of his leg. Frank is right; they draw no blood.

He feels naked and cold.

The fact that all of his newly shaved parts are usually encased in spandex does not matter. The potential lost nanoseconds do. Jimmy suspects that Dad would shave off the shining mop of hair on his head if he could, but his father understands the concessions one has to make for beauty. The extra drag on Jimmy's golden curls is a necessary sacrifice.

* * *

When he's eighteen, his dad gets him a hooker.

Years later, with Chazz's expertise, Jimmy will realize that what his dad actually got him was a very expensive high-class escort.

At the time, he doesn't know what to think. Her name is Rochelle, she's a redhead (Chazz will want to know if she was a _real_ redhead), and she is very kind to him. He doesn't understand why she's there, but she takes his hand and sits with him on the edge of his bed.

"Jimmy," she says gently, "do you think I'm pretty?"

He stammers a response in the affirmative. She smiles.

"Do you want to kiss me?"

Jimmy is what people politely call a "late bloomer." He was a gifted athlete when he was in diapers, but the vagaries of sexuality struck him later than most boys.

She kisses him, takes his hand and places it on her breast. He tries not to startle -- tries to be brave, to be a man. She takes her clothes off, and his, and they lay together, entwined in loneliness.

It's the last time he makes love until ten years later when Chazz comes into his life and simply never leaves.

* * *

He is twenty-six the last time he sees his father. The last he sees of Darren MacElroy is the side of his face, aged and cold as he looks out the limousine window at the snow-covered fields, a tumbler of bourbon in his hand.

Darren MacElroy had bred racehorses before going into athlete-making. When he made the jump, he brought the detachment with him, scheming in strength and agility, muscle mass and bone.

Jimmy was a child raised to be a Thoroughbred.

He doesn't see his father again for years, but Jimmy is aware of him every day. He feels his father in the strength of his body, the speed of his spins, the grace of his jumps -- and in his doll-like innocence, his naïveté, his ongoing struggle to join the world that was denied him for so long. These are the things, ugly and beautiful, that can never be taken away from him. Disowned or unadopted, he remains the living, breathing embodiment of his father's legacy.

Once, he thinks he spies his father in the crowd at a competition, but Chazz takes his hand, Coach smiles at him from the side of the rink, and he skates flawlessly onward.


End file.
